Two trackers published readings on Google’s People Also Ask boxes for August 2026, and the two numbers are far apart. One tracker’s August reading is 100%. The other’s is 86%. Both figures are third-party measurements.
How Much of Google’s People Also Ask Is AI-Generated?
Saeed Khosravi, founder of Nexunom and creator of Allintitle, posted on LinkedIn that Allintitle’s Also Ask Miner data shows Google’s People Also Ask answers running 100% AI-generated starting in August 2026. Mark Williams-Cook, founder of the SEO tool AlsoAsked, reported 86% for that same August, across roughly 19.2 million English-language queries, rising to 97% in the first week of September. Google has confirmed neither figure.
Two Different Instruments Produced These Two Numbers
AlsoAsked’s reading arrives with a stated sample of about 19.2 million queries, a stated language scope of English, and a stated window: August 2026, then the first week of September. Khosravi’s post, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable, states a month and nothing else. No sample size. No language. No country. No description of how Also Ask Miner tells an AI-generated answer apart from any other kind.
| Tracker | Reading | Sample | Language | Window |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allintitle (Also Ask Miner) | 100% | Not stated | Not stated | Starting August 2026 |
| AlsoAsked | 86%, then 97% | ~19.2 million queries | English | August 2026; first week of September 2026 |
The Trend Line and the New Reading Come From the Same Analyst
This is the part a side-by-side of the two figures leaves out. Williams-Cook’s 86% and 97% aren’t a fresh measurement arriving alongside Allintitle’s; they’re the latest two points in his own run at the same question, going back to July 2025, when Search Engine Land reported his analysis of more than 8.4 million English-language People Also Ask results at 12.6% AI-generated. He said then that he planned to update the analysis monthly. Fourteen months later, on a stated 2026 corpus of roughly 19.2 million English-language queries, the same analyst and the same declared language scope put early September at 97%. Allintitle is the outside reading here, published without a prior data point of its own. Williams-Cook frames what comes next as a forecast, not a further reading: “It seems highly likely we are on track for 100% shortly.” He called the underlying shift a “massive change by Google.”
What Does “AI-Generated” Mean in Either Reading?
Khosravi’s post doesn’t state how an answer gets classified as AI-generated instead of quoted, extracted, or written by whoever runs the page underneath. That question matters more at 100% than anywhere else on the scale: a flat 100% can describe a genuine wall-to-wall shift, or it can describe a classifier that now matches everything it’s shown. Nothing in Search Engine Roundtable’s write-up, or in Khosravi’s own wording as quoted there, rules out the second reading.
Even the Coverage Can’t Agree on What to Call It
Search Engine Roundtable’s headline calls these results “Google AI Overviews.” Khosravi’s own wording, as reported in that same piece, is “AI Generated.” Whether those two phrases point at the same underlying thing isn’t something any source in front of us settles, and this isn’t the place to settle it either. What’s on record is that the headline and the practitioner it’s covering aren’t reaching for the same term for whatever they measured.
What the Two Readings Agree On
Direction. Every published reading points the same way: 12.6% in July 2025, 86% in August, 97% in the first week of September, 100% in Allintitle’s August reading. Even the reading with a published sample and a prior reading fourteen months back puts last month’s share above eight answers in ten. That’s the part that survives not being able to audit either tool: something changed, it changed hard, and it kept moving between August and September.
A comparable gap sits behind a metric we’ve covered before: Ahrefs’ AI Adjusted Volume is itself built from Google’s own numbers rather than measured independently, a different shape of problem than Allintitle versus AlsoAsked, but the same lesson: know what fed the number before repeating it. The same caution applies to citation counts too, where two AI-citation studies diverged from each other over sample size and engine mix, without either study being wrong on its own terms.
What This Means for Anyone Reporting a People Also Ask Win
Any rank tracker, dashboard, or client report that still scores a People Also Ask appearance as an organic placement owes its reader two things it currently doesn’t get: which of these readings it used, and which month that reading is from. An appearance logged in July 2025 sat on top of a 12.6% baseline. One logged this month sits against a 97% reading for the first week of September from one tracker and a 100% reading for August from the other. Neither reading, on its own, establishes what the box displays for any particular query.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable; Search Engine Land’s July 2025 baseline coverage; Mark Williams-Cook’s write-up on Advanced Web Ranking.